


It's Quiet Uptown

by vacantstars



Series: The Long Way Home [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Injury Recovery, Post-Arishok, i never know how to tag these things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-19 00:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8180993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vacantstars/pseuds/vacantstars
Summary: Forgiveness. Can you imagine?

In which Hawke tries to recover from her duel with the Arishok, but some old wounds have yet to heal.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sort-of-but-not-really sequel to [Something You Can't Stand to Lose](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7940911), but you can definitely read this without having read it.

One week after her duel with the Arishok, Anders finally deems Hawke well enough to get out of bed. He does not, however, deem her well enough to resume her usual activities of pissing off every gang in the undercity and trekking up the Wounded Coast for a pair of torn trousers and a moth-eaten scarf, much to her disappointment.

“You still need to rest, love,” Anders says pointedly. “You can just run off and do something stupid a week after nearly…after nearly getting yourself killed.”

He falters a bit at that, and Hawke rubs small circles onto the back of his hand with her thumb to reassure him that she’s still there with him. 

“Yes, but you fixed it,” she insists, even though the logical part of her knows that he’s right. Her body might not feel as broken as it did a few days ago, but she’s still by no means feeling one hundred percent better. She still aches almost everywhere, there’s a dull pain in that persists in the back of her head, raising her arms too high continues to be a bit of an issue, and any sudden movement could possibly tear open the large stab wound in her abdomen— but at least she can walk again without falling face-first into the floor. 

“Not all of it, which is why you need to let yourself _rest_.” Anders sighs. “And you say that _I_ don’t take of myself—”

“Because you don’t.” Hawke raises an eyebrow and folds her arms. “What a pair we make, hm? Now go eat something while I pout all by my lonesome self and think of something _‘not stupid’_ to occupy my time with.”

“Have I ever told you that you’re my worst patient?” Anders asks, and to her relief, Hawke can hear amusement in his voice that she hasn’t heard since before the Qunari attack.

“You might’ve mentioned it, but I’d also like to think that I’m your _favorite_ patient,” she says, and leans into to kiss him.

* * *

Not being able to do anything stupid, as it turns out, means that Hawke can’t do almost any of the things she normally world. Maybe this is some sort of sign that she needs a better career choice, or possibly a non-lethal hobby. Given that she’s the _Champion_ now, however, those options seem to no longer be on the table— even if she’s still not entirely sure what her new title entails.

Anders goes to his clinic the next morning after she assures him multiple times that she’ll be fine and send for him if she needs him. Because of how severe Hawke’s injuries were, Anders had spent all of his time since the duel at home with her, and she can tell that he feels guilty for neglecting his patients. Darktown needs its healer, just as its healer needs it. So, with Anders out for the day, it’s just her and the household staff at the estate.

It’s uncomfortable to be there, and it shouldn’t be.

Truth to be told, the house has been uncomfortable since her mother died, so she’d been trying to avoid being home as much as possible. It was sort of ridiculous when she thought about it, but it was easy enough to do; finding trouble to involve herself in that keeps her away from home for most of the day isn’t particularly difficult. The past week had been the most consecutive time she’d ever spent at the estate, but it wasn’t so bad; she spent the first few days mostly drifting in and out of consciousness, and when she was awake, Anders was there. Or, if Anders was sleeping, one or more of their friends usually came by to keep her company. She never really had moments to herself, and she was perfectly fine with that.

But now, with Anders gone and the estate mostly quiet, she’s alone with her thoughts and how _wrong_ this all feels without her mother there. And her mother _would’ve_ been there, too, had she not failed at saving her.

Distraction. She needs a distraction.

She settles on organizing things the library, because she’d been meaning to do that anyway. Anders generally uses the desk closest to the fireplace in there to write his manifesto, so she’d decided to give it to him and move all of her things off of it so he has more room to work. With everything that had been going on lately, however, she hadn’t had the time. He also hasn’t written much of anything since the night they rescued Ella, but he should at least have a workspace ready for when he picks up his manifesto again.

The desk had become an impressively disorganized mess over the past few weeks, complete with unopened letters, half-written letters, notes from friends, manifesto drafts, crumpled up pieces of paper, scribbled-on pages from Fenris’ reading lessons, several bottles of ink, and an odd bottle of wine or two. She’s sure that there are other things there as well, and the fact that Anders had managed to find any space at all on the desk to work must be some sort of miracle.

After carefully putting pages of the manifesto (including crumbled-up ones she found on the floor) and anything else that was probably Anders’ into a separate pile on the chair, she starts to sort through what was left on the desk. Most of it— invitations to noble parties that had long since passed that she’d either ignored or forgotten to respond to, old letters, and several of Isabela’s crude drawings— was to become kindling, but towards the bottom of the mess, she finds a note that she’d completely forgotten about:

_My Dearest Marian,_

_I’m proud of you._

_Love,  
Mother_

Looking at it only reminds her of what a failure she is and causes another wave a guilt to crash down on her, so she quickly throws it into the kindling pile and blinks back the sudden wetness in her eyes.

* * *

Between his clinic and Mage Underground business, Anders coming home late is fairly routine. Hawke always waits up for him, and it’s a gesture that she knows he’s touched by (even if he insists that she should go to bed without him, because “there’s no sense in both of us suffering from sleep deprivation.”). It’s already well past the hour when Anders usually arrives, however, so she figures it must be busy at the clinic.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing she knows, someone is gently shaking her shoulder to wake her. For half a second, her sleep-addled brain is convinced that it’s her mother waking her after she’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table again, but the voice saying her name is _definitely_ not Leandra’s. 

Her mother is dead, anyway.

“Marian.” That’s Anders, definitely. “Were you waiting for me?”

“Mm.” She sits up slowly and groggily, trying to avoid wincing as her ribs protested the movement. Falling asleep hunched over a desk had not been her best idea, but she smiles up sleepily at him all the same. “I always do, don’t I?”

“You haven’t hurt yourself, have you?” Anders asks worriedly. He looks even more exhausted than he sounds: his hair is disheveled, there’s dark circles under his eyes, and she swears that he seems paler than usual. “That position can’t have been comfortable—”

“Anders, I’m fine,” she says, despite the ache in her ribs indicating the contrary. “Come to bed.”

Anders doesn’t look convinced and presses his lips into a thin line, but given that he doesn’t argue, he really must be dead on his feet. Hawke gets up out of the chair she’d been sleeping in and gets into bed, and he joins her after he’s pulled off his coat and boots. She ends up with her head pillowed on his shoulder and arm thrown lazily across his chest, and he has his arms wrapped loosely around her waist. 

“Long day at the clinic?” Hawke asks. He hums in response and closes his eyes. “How is Darktown?”

“It’s…not as bad as everywhere else, physically. But a lot of people ran there when the Qunari attacked the city,” Anders says. He moves one of his hands up and absentmindedly uses a healing spell to lessen the pain in her ribs. How he still has the energy to do it is beyond her, but part of her thinks that he’s unaware he’s even casting in the first place. “That was most patients I’ve had in a long time.”

The first hints of sunlight are already beginning to stream through the windows, and she knows Anders well enough by now to know that he’ll sleep for a few hours (if he’s lucky) and go right back to his clinic. He’s only one man, and he can’t heal an entire sewer’s worth of refugees on his own, Fade spirit or no.

“I’ll come with you tomorrow, then,” she decides. “You could use the help.”

Anders opens an eye at that, surprised. “Love, I appreciate that, but you don’t have to.”

“Worried about me distracting you?” Hawke teases, raising her eyebrows suggestively, and Anders snorts. 

“There are far better places to distract me,” he says. “My clinic is hardly romantic.”

“I seem to recall said clinic being where a certain someone kissed me for the first time— in front of his patients, too, might I add. It was all very scandalous,” Hawke says. “Although, it _did_ give the people of Darkwown something other than rats and the Coterie to gossip about, so I suppose it wasn’t all bad for them.”

“Yes, I’m sure the local gossip is the first thing on every denizen’s of Darktown’s mind.” Anders chuckles a bit. “But really, you don’t have to come with me. I can manage.”

“It’s almost time for breakfast, which is around the same time you left yesterday,” she points out. “I might be lacking in bedside manner, but I can sort herbs for you and bandage wounds. Besides, weren’t you the one who told me not to do anything stupid? I would think helping the sick and the poor qualifies as something decidedly _not_ stupid.”

Truth to be told, she’s always wanted to do more to help him, but she’d never had the time to do it properly. Sure, she dropped off any spare herbs she came across at the clinic and gave what she could, but Anders is still the only one (not counting Justice) doing anything to help the people of Darktown. Then there’s his Mage Underground business, which he’d vehemently refused to let her get involved in. But he’s been with the Underground less and less (as far as she can tell) since the incident with Ella, so she hasn’t brought it up in quite some time. Really, helping him around the clinic is the absolute _least_ she can do for him (and the refugees) after everything that he’s done for her.

Besides, it’ll do her some good to get out of the house. 

Anders sighs. “I— all right, love. If you’re sure.”

“I promise not to scare your patients?” she offers, and Anders kisses the top of her head as he closes his eyes again.

* * *

Kirkwall is still a mess a week after the Qunari fight, but at least they’d gotten most of the bodies (in Hightown, anyway; Lowtown is another story) and debris out of the streets, making it possible to travel. Hawke had been too busy trying to stop an invasion to pay attention to the collateral damage the city’s infrastructure was taking, but she guesses that it’s going to take a while yet for it to recover completely. 

Darktown, on the other hand, is as pleasant as it always is, so it’s good to know that some things never change. Anders’ decrepit clinic is still miraculously holding itself together, too. Hawke’s grown oddly fond of his hole in the wall, even if it smells like…well, a sewer. 

The patients start pouring in almost immediately after they get there, and Anders busies himself with tending to them right away. Hawke keeps herself occupied by sorting through a pile of herbs that she’d brought back from a trip to the Sundermount weeks ago on his makeshift desk. She isn’t a spirit healer, and her grasp on creation magic in general is very limited, but her father had taught her basic herbalism as a child. Those were always her least favorite of lessons, so she never would’ve imagined actually using the skills she picked up from them to help her lover (who also happened to be an apostate) run a free clinic in the sewers of a city run by templars in everything but name.

Her life always did have a funny way of surprising her.

She wonders what her father would’ve thought of Anders. They’d have gotten along after he was finished giving Anders the “hurt my daughter and I’ll force magic you off of a cliff” speech, probably. But after hearing what Anders had been through, he’d have welcomed him into the family. Mother seemed to like Anders well enough, but Hawke knew that she would’ve preferred if she chose someone like Sebastian instead of another apostate— an apostate who lived in the sewers, at that.

_Well,_ she thinks, _why stop being the family disappointment now?_

“Marian?” Anders’ voice snaps her out of thoughts. “Can you change Max’s bandages?”

Bandages. Right. She can do that. Hawke gets up out of her chair carefully to avoid jostling any of her own injuries, takes some clean bandages from the desk, and makes her way over to where Anders motioned for her to go. There’s a boy who can’t be older than ten and has his right arm wrapped up in bandages sitting on a cot and looking at her curiously. Hawke offers him a friendly smile.

“You must be Max,” she says, kneeling down in front of him. 

“Tha’s me.” The boy nods. “Are you helpin’ the healer?”

“He’s doing all the hard work, really. I’m just here to look pretty and try not to break anything.” Hawke holds out her hand. “Can I see your arm?”

“Yeah.” Max extends his arm, and she carefully starts peeling away the bandages. “Are you the lady who killed that great big Qunari?”

“I’ve killed a lot of great big Qunari,” Hawke says. “It’s a strange hobby that I apparently picked up.” 

“The, uh. The leader one. Him.”

“Oh, yes, him.” She finishes taking off the boy’s old bandages and drops them onto the dirty floor of the clinic. There’s a decently-sized gash on his arm, but it’s healing nicely. If he’s lucky, the scar won’t even be noticeable. “I personally saw to it that he’ll no longer be brooding on the docks, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I knew it!” Max seems rather proud of himself for deducing that information. “‘Cause they say some lady named Hawke did it, and the healer’s got a Hawke, then you show up. Here. So you must be that lady they’re all talkin’ ‘bout.”

Hawke smiles a bit. _Darktown gossip._

“But the lady who killed that Qunari fella is a mage,” Max continues as Hawke takes a cloth from the basin of water by one of the legs of the cot and cleans his wound. “So you’s one of them robes?”

“That’s me,” she says. “Qunari-killing, city-saving mage who happens to like your healer.”

Max is quiet for a moment after that as Hawke finishes cleaning the cut on his arm. When she’s satisfied that it’s as clean as she’s going to get it, she drops the cloth back into the basin and grabs the clean bandages.

“They say mages are cursed, aren’t they?” Max asks suddenly. “Real dangerous types o’ people.”

“We’re just like everyone else. Some are good, some are bad,” she says, trying not to think of the crazed eyes of the _bad mage_ who murdered her mother. “And some are somewhere in the middle, but most just want to be left alone and avoid all the _demon-y_ bits. The healer’s not a bad man, is he?”

“No,” the boy agrees. “And you. You save people.”

_Not that I do a good job of it,_ she thinks, but swallows that comment back and starts re-applying the bandages around Max’s arm. “I’ve been known to do that on the occasion.”

“Maybe the templars wrong about ya,” Max says after another pause as she finishes tying the bandages around his arm. “Maybe you lot aren’t all that bad.”

“We aren’t all that bad,” Hawke agrees, and out of the corner of her eye, she can see Anders smile.

* * *

Hawke’s presence becomes a regular occurrence around the clinic before long, and the refugees seem happy to have her there. A Fereldan becoming the city’s Champion is a source of pride for them, and given how fiercely protective they are of Anders, many are pleased that their favorite healer was able to find some happiness with a fellow apostate.

She still isn’t well enough to return to her usual occupation of vigilantism, but it’s just as well; the clinic is important, and with an extra set of hands around, Anders is able to return home before the crack of dawn. It’s easier to be home when Anders is there with her, because then she doesn’t have to be alone with her memories and the guilt that accompanies them.

One night after coming home from the clinic, she finds him sitting at the desk in the library, quill in hand and staring pensively at a piece of paper.

“Anders?” 

“Wha— oh, hello, love,” he breathes, startled. “I— It’s late, isn’t it?”

“A bit.” Hawke shrugs (her shoulders no longer hurt when she does so, much to her relief) and walks over to him. She’s wearing a pair of dark pants and a shirt that was definitely his at one point but had somehow become hers, which are clothes that she often wears to bed. “Are you working on your manifesto again?”

“…A bit,” Anders says after a pause. “I don’t know if I trust myself to fight for mages again, but…I just wanted to add a few things. No harm in that, I suppose.”

“Show me?” Hawke asks, resting her chin on his shoulder. “If you want to, that is.”

“…‘ _Magic is a gift from the Maker_ ,’” Anders starts, and she kisses his cheek and listens as he reads on.

* * *

_“You’re here. Leandra was so sure you’d come for her.”_

_She doesn’t know how, but she’s back in that Maker-damned Lowtown foundry that reeks of dead bodies and has blood splattered all over the walls. Quinten is smiling at her with that vacant, deranged look in his eyes, and Hawke wants nothing more than to kill him, but she can’t. Her body won’t move, and her voice is frozen. She’s trapped, forced to watch helplessly as what’s left of her mother turns to face her._

_“This is your fault,” Leandra says. She’s wearing that awful moth-eaten dress, and the sight of the crude stitches in her neck makes Hawke feel as though she’s going to throw up. “Why did you let him take me?”_

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, _she wants to say, but the words won’t come._

_“You let Bethany run off,” her mother continues. “And took Carver on that damned expedition even though I begged you not to! You lost him to the Wardens! Your little brother, doomed to wander the Deep Roads and fight darkspawn forever! How could you?!”_

_She wants to scream that she doesn’t know, that she never asked for any of this, that she’s so damn sorry that she can’t save anyone_ — _but the words are stuck in her throat._

_“You couldn’t save us,” her mother says quietly. “And his death will be your fault, too.”_

_Leandra staggers to the side to reveal Anders laying on his side on the floor behind her, stitches in his neck and Sunburst brand on his forehead._

_This time, Hawke does scream._

Suddenly, she’s bolt upright in an entirely different room, and there’s a hand on her arm and someone saying her name. She's in a cold sweat and gasping for breath, and the ache in her ribs has returned with a vengeance from sitting up so quickly. It takes her a moment to realize that she’s no longer in that bloody Lowtown foundry, but instead in her Hightown bedroom with Anders sitting up next to her in bed and holding onto her arm, concern written clearly all of her face.

“Marian, love, it’s all right,” he says gently. “It was just a dream.”

“A dream,” she repeats shakily, trying to steady her breathing and erratic heartbeat. “Just a dream.”

“It can’t hurt you. You’re safe.”

Hawke tries to focus on his voice instead of the memory of her mother’s words and the image of Anders on the floor, and after a few moments, she’s finally able to at least get her breathing back to normal and her heart to calm down. She’s still a bit shaky, but she can deal with shaking. A heart attack, on the other hand— not so much.

“Sorry,” she manages, and Anders shakes his head.

“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“I do,” Hawke says quietly. “My family’s mostly dead because of me. That warrants a lot of apologizing.”

“Oh, sweetheart, no. None of that is your fault.” Anders pulls her into his arms and lets him, trying her absolute hardest to fight back her tears. “It was never your fault.”

She buries her face in his chest, taking a moment to draw comfort from his solidity. He’s there, he’s real, and he’s tangible; but he’s also _alive_ , not stitched back together from broken parts after being made—

“I promised my father that I’d look after them.” Hawke says thickly. “Right before he died, I promised him that. Couldn’t even keep my last word to my dying father.”

“You saved Carver.” Anders’ voice is gentle as he tightens his hug and rubs circles onto the small of her back. “You stopped the monster who took your mother. You freed her, too— she said that herself. You’ve saved mages, children, and an entire city, love. He’d be proud of you. They all would.”

A tear spills out over her cheek and drips onto Anders’ shirt before she can stop it. Dammit. “I’m not. Proud of me, I mean.”

“I am,” Anders says, and she can feel the last bit of restraint she has physically snap the moment he says it.

She doesn’t sob outright; she’d never been that type of crier. It’s quiet, and she holds onto to Anders as if he’s a raft that will keep her drowning in the middle of a stormy, turbulent sea. Her tears— tears that have been held back for weeks— soak into Anders’ shirt, and she wants to apologize for it but can’t seem to vocalize it. Anders holds her as she cries and continues his ministrations, whispering things that she can’t quite make out but appreciates all the same.

Whether they stay like that for minutes or hours or days, she doesn’t know, but she feels drained and empty by the time she finally runs out of tears. She hadn’t cried in the weeks after Leandra died, in part due to shock, but also because she hadn’t had the time. Her grief was put on hold the moment more trouble with the Qunari started, which was the day after her mother’s funeral. So she plastered a smile on her face, cracked a few bad jokes, and insisted that she was fine, even though no one fell for it.

Hawke is vaguely aware of the fact that they somehow end up laying down before too long, but she’s too emotionally and physically exhausted to do anything but let Anders pull them back against the pillows. He still has his arms wrapped around her and she has her head on his shoulder, and they lay in comfortable silence for a time. 

“Sorry about your shirt,” she finally says once she trusts herself enough to speak. Her voice sounds hoarse even in her own ears, and now that she’s calmed down a bit, the embarrassment from her breakdown is starting to settle in. Maker, she _hates_ crying, let alone crying in front of other people.

Anders wipes an errant tear from her cheek with his thumb. “Don’t be sorry. It’s all right.”

She has no idea what she’s done to deserve him, but whatever it was, it probably wasn’t enough.

“I love you,” Hawke whispers, and drifts off into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

The next morning is one those rare ones where Hawke wakes before Anders, so she untangles herself from the mess of limbs that they’ve gotten themselves into as carefully as she can to avoid waking him. She quietly slips out of their bedroom goes into the library, walking briskly past her mother’s door, because there’s something she needs to do.

The kindling pile that she’d made from all the old papers on the desk that she’d given to Anders had been relocated to next to the fireplace. She sits down next to it, and after sifting through it for a few minutes, she finds what she’s looking for. 

It still hurts to look at her mother’s note, but at least she can now do it without wanting to run.

“There you are,” says Anders’ voice from somewhere behind her. “Are you all right, love?”

Hawke looks over her shoulder. “Never better. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“I was only half-asleep.” Anders shrugs lightly as Hawke pockets the note and gets up. He still looks worried after what happened last night, so she gives him a smile that doesn’t feel as forced as her other ones have been lately. It’s a start, she thinks. “But I have good news for you: you’re well enough to go back to getting into trouble that isn’t _too_ strenuous.” 

“Oh. Well.” 

“Don’t celebrate all at once,” Anders teases lightly, taking her hand and drawing her in close. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

“Crying all over you last night was cathartic,” she says, wrapping her arms around him. “I’ll manage, I think.”

“I’m here for you. Whatever you need,” he says gently.

“I know.” And she _does_ know. “Thank you.”

“What are you going to do today, then?” Anders asks after a pause, breaking the brief silence that had fallen between them. “Remind the Coterie why they took you off of their Wintersend gift list?”

“Tempting as that is, I believe my plans for today are to continue making a nuisance of myself by scandalizing a certain Darktown healer in front of his patients,” Hawke responds casually, then moves to kiss him.

There’s a part of her that knows that she’ll never be able to move past what happened to her mother, and that maybe she hasn’t been _all right_ for quite a while; but wounds take time to heal, and she has someone who loves her even when she can’t love herself. She might never be able to learn the art self-forgiveness, but maybe she’ll at least learn to make her own peace. 

**Author's Note:**

> I like to headcanon that Hawke spent a lot of the time in-between Acts 2 and 3 not only recovering from the Arishok fight, but also dealing with the aftermath of Leandra's death because the game never gave her the chance to grieve properly before throwing more bullshit at her. I also like to headcanon that she helped Anders around the clinic quite a bit during that time, too, because Hawke and Anders being mutually supportive and taking care of each other is my aesthetic.
> 
> One of these days, I'll write a handers fic that isn't angsty. One day.


End file.
